The UK Supreme Court has just ruled by a majority of 3 to 2 that the UK government can stop women from Northern Ireland accessing abortions on the NHS, even when they are in England. This was the UK government fighting an appeal by a UK citizen who was a child at the time of having to pay for her abortion. Anyone assuming they’re not going to concede anything on women’s rights and LGBT rights to the DUP should probably read this.
I’m not clever enough to properly take in legal documents tbh, is this the key section: “A difference of treatment between UK citizens present in England on the grounds of usual residence falls within the scope of “other status” for the purposes of article 14”
Like “other status” is vague enough for it to be deemed applicable here?
my understanding of abortion as an issue used to be very basic, i pretty much knew nothing about it - the only conversation i’d ever had relating to it was when someone mentioned in passing (no idea why) that the thing we were talking about was like the two sides of the abortion argument. you’re either pro life or pro choice, it’s not like it’s pro life or pro death. therefore pro choice is the reasonable side of the argument to take
then last year i saw a poet called Julie do a spoken word piece, written like a letter to the pro life movement and it absolutely floored me. one example of the things in it: IVF treatment unavoidably involves the destruction of fertilised eggs, but the pro life movement don’t seem to have a problem with this.
i spoke to julie afterwards and somehow ended up convincing her a few months later that i could write music to go with her poems
its astonishing that this is a thing. how can some uk nationals not have the same rights as others? i cant get my head round how this can be ruled to be ok, its outrageous
This always seems more to do with control, and sex - than it does about the politics of reproduction even. It’s inherently misogynistic and it seems like the ulterior motive (if not exterior) seems to always be about slut shaming / putting women in jeopardy for daring to be sexually active at any time in their lives.
the more i think about it the less it makes sense. i get that healthcare is devolved, but why shouldnt women from NI have the same right to access to healthcare as rUK? if im in wales or scotland or NI, wouldnt i have the same right to access healthcare as if im in england? god the more i think about it the stupider it seems
So, if I understand this correctly - I, as an EU citizen, can travel to any EU country & recieve the same health rights as any other citizen of that country - but, because someone travelling from NI to England/Wales/Scotland is not crossing state-to-state, internal rather than EU jurisdiction applies?
Not sure what’s to be done about it. The largest parties only support abortion in the case of FFA/sexual crimes, if they support abortion at all. Only the Green Party favours full decriminalisation, and they have 2 MLAs.
It’s one of those situations like the death penalty, where most people would support it but it’s illegal because it’s medieval. The world is a strange place to be.
Yes, it is. Women are frequently prosecuted for obtaining abortions in Northern Ireland (e.g. by buying abortion pills online). Recently there were police raids on women’s homes in Belfast in an attempt to find concealed abortion pills.
It is terrifying. Northern Irish women are UK tax-payers but they can’t access the same treatment, and indeed, the same dignity as their English counterparts. There have been accounts of irish women bleeding out on the floors of airports in England because they’ve been forced to travel for an abortion but haven’t had enough money for a place to stay. It makes me so furious and ashamed of my home country. The political system in Northern Ireland is too polarised and sluggish to be fit for purpose, imo (no wonder NI hasn’t had a government for months now…) People use women’s lives to score cheap political points, and change is slow. Something has to change, and soon.
